I am interested in fellow Queen fans' opinions on the addition in '82 of an extra keyboard player. I was recently watching my copy of Argentina '81 and thought to myself: it never sounded this real again.
I always liked how in Need Your Loving Tonight, Freddie played a brief bit of piano during the guitar solo, then returned to the front of the stage. On following tours, Fisher or Spike would play a part like this. The most notable difference for me was always the performance of Save Me. Before '82, Brian starting off on piano, then Freddie moving over to play as Brian assumed Red Special duties was a highlight of any show. For me, it was the highlight of the WWRY video. (Montreal '81)
But in '82, the sound of Save Me was a bit wimpy, and borderline cheesy.
Granted, the extra keyboard player added a great new dimension to Crazy Little Thing, but I still prefer the early versions of it best, such as London '79 (Kampuchea Concert).
I know one of the reasons for the change was to have Freddie out front more, but to me, seeing him at the piano for any song, whether it was a snippet of Need Your Loving Tonight, or for longer in songs such as BoRhap and Somebody to Love, was always my favorite part of any Queen show. It's where he belonged! Just wonderin' if you guys and gals liked the move in '82 or not. Thanks!
From your post, it seems that your point of view is from that of a viewer after the fact (i.e. on video) than actually at the gig. I never saw them live, so can't comment from experience, but I would say that having Fred more free would be better for the actual audience at the time. This would be particularly true when they hit the large arena/stadium era which is when this change happened.
On the other hand, having Fred and Brian share piano/keyboard duties does mean that there's the extra element of the boys doing it all themselves and looking like a group of four true musicians rather than the focus being, in the large part, on Fred (which may be why many people think Queen is Fred).
So I see your point, but I also see the reasons why they might have made the change given the increasing scope of the gigs in the 80s
Here's my breakdown of my Queen live keyboardist preferences...
Necessary:
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Is This The World We Created
I Want To Break Free
A Kind Of Magic
Radio Ga Ga
Unnecessary:
Play The Game
Save Me
Action This Day (the solo)
Now I'm Here (the hard chords before "just a new man", 84-86)
Somebody To Love (to compromise for the backing vocals)
The first list contains everything that truly did add to the music, and would have sounded much more empty without it... the second list contains what I see as useless additions to the music they could have easily done without.